In a complex system with multitudes of components, the system as a whole may suffer from performance degradation, even when most system components, if monitored or tested individually, report no level of fault or unusual activity. In particularly large computing environments, solving the above problem can be very challenging and expensive or virtually impractical.
For example, an online service provider may have an infrastructure that includes different computer servers in communication with different types of storage servers that in turn interact with many storage switches, controllers, etc. If the individual components seem healthy, but the system as a whole is not performing well, the interaction between the multiple components may have to be tested exhaustively.
The interaction between certain system components may have been previously tested by the vendor of one or more components before the components were installed in a customer's system. For example, before releasing a new server, the server vendor may have tested the server's operation in environments with different interface cards, network switches, storage devices, other servers, etc.
When a customer has a problem with one of the components that have been integrated into the customer's environment, it would be helpful to have access to the vendor's test records, even if the customer's environment does not exactly match that of the vendor's. The vendor's test records may include information that could be used to diagnose the problem in the customer's environment.